Never You Fear
by ColtsAndQuiills
Summary: Running along the wooden bridge, I reach the railing just in time to see him drop past, his khaki coat whipping against his legs. He looks like a broken sparrow as he hurtles downward, crashing into the water at an angle that makes me recoil and wince. In the time it takes for him to resurface I almost forget how to breathe.


He's falling from the sky, and for a second I wonder if someone slipped something into my last beer, because there's nothing but lake for miles around and no sound of a departing engine, so where the hell is he falling from?

Running along the wooden bridge, I reach the railing just in time to see him drop past, his khaki coat whipping against his legs. He looks like a broken sparrow as he hurtles downward, crashing into the water at an angle that makes me recoil and wince. In the time it takes for him to resurface I almost forget how to breathe.

"Hey! Hey, you alright!?" My voice carries in this stillness, but there's no reaction.

Obscuring shadows are swimming across his face. If not for his coat billowing against the surface of the lake, I'd lose him. Already the water is starting to swallow him up.

"Somebody! I need help over here! Help!" I cup my hands around my mouth, shouting to the point that my throat is ready to tear, but the houses in the distance remain quiet.

My fingers suddenly feel five times too large to handle my cell, but I somehow manage to punch in the three digits I need. The responder sounds so calm on the other end you'd think I was ordering off of QVC instead of bellowing about a person drowning twenty feet below me. She's in the middle of telling me to wait for assistance when I toss the phone aside.

Guy's dying. Stop talking at me. _Help_ me.

It's not until I kick off my sneakers and am over the railing that I realize what a seriously bad idea this is. The distance between me and the lake seems to triple without a barrier between us. I picture hitting an unseen rock, imagine the sensation of my spine splintering against stone, can almost taste the murky water that will fill my lungs when I try to scream.

But the guy is starting to sink. Watching him disappear shuts down my creative half and kicks my backside into action.

I put my hands together, bend my knees, and prepare to dive.

Then I take one look at how far away the water is, declare, "Nope," and jump feet first instead.

The last thing I see before going under is the moon's reflection. For a second, I have the dizzying sensation that I'm going the wrong way, falling into the night sky as swiftly as this guy swan-dived to earth. Anxiety tightens my chest as the world disappears. Above and below, there's only cold, smothering darkness.

Swimming isn't my thing. I was more of a track and field kind of guy in my school days, and even then I was an underachiever. Luckily for me, life and death situations are turning out to be very inspiring. I break the surface of the lake just as he's kissing it goodbye, and by some stroke of luck I manage to catch a fistful of his jacket.

… A really stupid, unnecessarily long, Dick Tracy-wannabe jacket. The thing is tangling us both up as I tug him against me.

The effort of pulling his head above the water makes me grunt, and for a moment we both dip beyond oxygen's reach. Panic will pull me down surer than any current, so I focus on getting my arm looped across his chest. He's warm under my spread fingers, even through the soaked fabric of a white-collared shirt, and I want to take that as a good sign but I'm not sure I can feel his heartbeat. My backstroke makes his head loll to the side, pressing his temple to my jaw, so for the first time I can make out the gash running across his forehead. Smooth as a surgical incision, he didn't get it in the fall. Memories of cheap tabloids and late-night TV specials on alien abductions and autopsies rush to mind, and I find my eyes searching the sky.

"Any sign of green, glowing men and you're on your own," I groan.

He can't have more than a few inches on me, if even that, but his weight is a struggle as I thrash and kick our way to the mossy bank. I'd like to think that if my life were a movie, the Baywatch theme would be playing right now, but from a distance, my sloppy rescue probably resembles a clip from When Animals Attack.

By the time we make it, my muscles are beginning to seize from the chill of the water. The land is sloped and slick, moss ripping in clumps between my fingers, mud as soft as clay giving away under my heels as I drag us to safety. I hope this guy's threads don't mean much to him, because we're both beyond the help of a dry cleaner at this point.

I roll him off of me and am immediately shivering from his absence. He hasn't so much as moaned or sputtered, which brings a whole new kind of goosebump to my skin.

"Hey. Wake up." I know it won't be that easy, but I say it anyway. Pulling myself to my knees, I lean over him and slap his cheek a few times. "Come on, scruffy. Up and at 'em." A good eight out of ten times this works in movies.

"Aw, _please_! Damn it!"

Now, the last time I tried CPR was a lifetime ago, in eighth-grade PE. So as I get on my knees and lower my face to his, rather than recalling anything useful, the memory that comes to mind is my friends and I pretending to make out with our manikin.

Not helpful.

"Okay… I got ya. Head back." Check. Easy enough. "Chin forward." I think my hand is shaking as I guide his mouth open. "Nose pinched, and…"

For the second time I'm surprised at how warm he is, especially considering I feel like a victim of hypothermia in the making. And maybe I've been overusing my chapstick, but the shadow of stubble around his mouth is rough against my lips. Let it grow or let it go, man, because this shit is not comfortable.

His chest is rising and falling as I exhale, again and again. On the inside, my cursing devolves into desperate begging for this guy to return my breaths with one of his own. Nothing. He hasn't so much as batted an eyelash.

I break away, my eyes moving down his face. I hate the motionless creases of his brow, the steadiness of his jaw. Two small, telltale paths run outside the corners of his lips. He's a guy who's laughed a lot in his lifetime. Or maybe frowned.

"Come on!" I don't know why he's making me so angry. I'm pissed at how peaceful he looks. He shouldn't seem so relaxed when his life is on the line. He should be fighting.

One of my fists covers the other and I start what are hopefully accurate compressions on his chest. Despite the frumpy clothes, the guy must be Vin Diesel under there, because it's like pressing on a steel door.

"You're not dying like this." One. Two. Three.

Breathe, man.

"You hear me?!" I'm pushing so hard that my stomach twists, certain any second I'll hear a rib crack.

Why aren't you moving yet?

"Listen, I'm not about to have another dead guy on my hands, so you better pull yourself together, think of something to live for, and wake the fuck up!"

I crush my mouth over his, aware that my fingers are digging into his jaw harder than necessary but unable to help myself. A stupid, relentless part of me is convinced that my sheer force of willpower is going to make this guy rise from the dead.

And then he does.

His eyes, inches from my own, open like window shades that have been released too quickly. There's no squinting, no groggie wandering.

Logic tells me that the electric blue blaze building in his stare must be a trick of the moonlight, but I'm too busy screaming internally to listen to reason.

"What th—!"

My words are smothered against his palm before I can get them out. I try to pull away, but he follows with the smooth, confident motions of someone who's done this a thousand times before. It should be easy to escape the grip of a man who had been so close to death, but my body buckles under the pressure of his knee on my thigh and his forearm against my chest. Pinned, I try to wrench away, but I might as well have the Chrysler Building on top of me for all the good it does. I'm about to bite down on his hand when something cold and sharp presses to the vulnerable hollow of my throat.

We both go still — me awaiting death, and him ready to dish it out. At least, that's what I assume until he speaks.

"Why were you kissing me?"

My eyes have been squeezed shut, but they fly open when I hear the question rumbled above. I'm ready to see a devil, an alien, more of that freakish blue light, but he looks deceptively normal. Your average salary man gone a bit homicidal, sure, but human.

The blade stays at my skin, but he removes his other hand from my lips. My first thought is that he's screwing with me, yet the way he's staring makes the question seem sincere.

"H-huh? I was trying mouth-to-mouth—"

"I don't need you to explain the mechanics. I know how it works. I was asking you _why_."

Oh, God. What drugs is this guy on? Did the oxygen flow reach him a little too late?

My face must not be hiding my thoughts very well, because his eyes narrow and I see his jaw work. He seems more irritated than malicious. Like the only guy in a group who can't figure out the punchline to a joke everyone else is laughing at. I start smiling nervously and the knife presses closer in response.

"CPR! You know, CPR!" I choke out.

His head tilts. My dog used to look at me that way after realizing I only pretended to throw him a ball.

"Is that a euphemism?"

No, that's my sanity flying out the metaphorical window, because this cannot be happening.

Luckily, before things can get even more awkward, a car growls from the road. I'm expecting the flash of red and blue lights, but instead am blinded by the high beams of some black heap that skids to a stop close-by.

"HEL—mgnh!"

His hand clamps back over my mouth as he stands. I swear my feet actually leave the ground as I'm pulled up as effortlessly as a runt kid.

"Hey!" a voice shouts from the driver's side of the vehicle.

Two guys get out of the car, and I'm cheering on the inside because my saviors-to-be made sure to drink their milk while growing up. Just the sight of them might be enough to scare off this psycho.

"Cas!" One of them shouts and begins to jog over.

"Dean." He smiles near my ear.

Maybe someone _did _mess with my beer after all. I'm going to wake up with a wicked headache, or maybe a kidney missing and a bathtub full of ice, but it'll be better than this. At least those two options would make sense.

"You alright?" The taller of the pair frowns. I can't tell if it's the cut on my captor's head that worries him or the fact that I'm a part of this reunion.

"Who the hell is that? He one of them?" Dean interrupts before … Cas … can answer the other guy's question.

"No, he's human. I awoke and he was kissing me."

My face starts to burn and I do my best to insist otherwise from behind the palm at my mouth.

"His technique wasn't very good," Cas adds with an authoritative raise of his brow.

The huge guy's forehead creases, his mouth opening to say something, but then he decides it's better not to try. I can appreciate that. Dean… Dean looks as done as I feel.

I yank hard, and this time Cas lets me go. The freedom comes without warning, and my arms pinwheel to keep me from falling on my ass.

"What the hell, man!" So my temper is getting the better of me. I think a little anger is justified by this point. "All I did was try to h—"

"Hurry up and put the whammy on him so we can get out of here," Dean snorts, turning to head to the car.

I don't know what a whammy is, but it sure as hell is getting nowhere near me.

There's no way I can overpower the three of them, but if I make it back to the water, will they be desperate enough to follow?

I'm about to find out, ready to make a run for it, when a familiar wailing crests over the bridge. The three of them look up and I seize the distraction like a life preserver, mud kicking up from my heels as I tear off in the direction of the approaching ambulance and police cruiser.

Dean curses and fingers come within a hair's breadth of grasping my shoulder, but I don't look back.

"Son, you been drinking?"

"What? No! You need to go after that car! There were these guys, and one of them pulled a knife on me, and—"

"You _sure_ you haven't been drinking?"

"Well, yeah, earlier. But I'm not drunk! You've got to —"

"You're the one who called 9-1-1 and reported a drowning man?"

"Yes! Damn it, that's what I'm trying to tell you, he's crazy! He assaulted me, and then these two other guys showed up, talking like mobsters or something."

"So where are they now?"

"They're… well, I guess they took off when they saw you coming. But if you head that way, you can catch up to them."

"We're going to need you to come with us."

"What?! Why! I was trying to save someone, and now you're trying to take me in? What the hell kind of cop are you?!"

There's a soft click, and I don't even realize he's drawn his gun until it's aimed right at me.

It doesn't pay to be a hero.


End file.
